He's gonna keep us waitin', huh?
Welcome to a jam-packed Headlines edition of Nerds Without Pants! It’s time to kick off “The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-E3” season, starting with Sony’s big PlayStation Showcase! It sure was…something. Something that we’ll talk about. Please be excited for it. PLEASE.
The 25th anniversary of a victory fanfare for the PlayStation.
“And now, the most anticipated epic adventure of the year will never come to a theater near you. Final Fantasy VII.” And so began my interest in RPGs. That commercial blew my 12-year-old mind back in 1997. Besides the impressive animations shown (which we would later learn were only cut-scenes), I was intrigued at seeing that we somehow jumped from Final Fantasy III on the Super NES to now VII on the PlayStation. “What manner of sorcery is this?”, I wondered.
A Robot Boy and his Dog
For years, there has been a heated debate among fans of the Mega Man series regarding which one is the best of the original hexalogy. After the facts have been laid out and philosophical life lessons thoroughly dissected, the debate usually boils down to Mega Man 2 vs. Mega Man 3. Which is the greater of the two? Well, no matter which side you’re on, we can all agree on the thing- the cover art for Mega Man 3 finally got it right! No more awkward stances or that pistol-for-an-arm-cannon nonsense. Of course, he didn’t look as good as on the Famicom cover, but that’s another argument.
Hold on to your Butz.
There are several similarities between Final Fantasy V and its younger sibling, Final Fantasy III. Chiefly of which, both games stayed exclusively in Japan well after the series moved on to the PlayStation in the mid-90s. For a time, Square Enix (formally SquareSoft) was uncertain if western audiences would grasp the deeper gameplay mechanics that drove character growth. But after the global success of Final Fantasy VII, they decided it was time to start bridging the gap in sequels in the US lineup. As a result, Final Fantasy V was the first to be released as part of the Final Fantasy Anthology compilation on the PlayStation in 1999.
We did it! We listed every PS2 game!
No, I didn’t forget that we have this last part of the Nerds Without Pants PS2 list special to release! I’m just…really lazy, y’all. But here it is! Not sure if we’ll ever do another one of these, but there’s something kinda fun about just going through an entire console library, so never say never.
It’s all downhill from here.
In 1996, UEP Systems released Cool Boarders on the PlayStation. It was one of the few pioneers of snowboarding games on home consoles. The popularity of extreme sports was steadily gaining momentum in the United States, as were releases of snowboarding titles from other game developers. So it was only natural that UEP Systems would follow up in 1997 with their sequel, Cool Boarders 2.
Oh yeah, we did this thing.
Hey, folks! No, we haven't forgotten about this Nerds Without Pants series where we go over every PS2 North American release one by one. I just...forgot to edit it. So enjoy this, as it's the next to last episode of this series, and I know all four of you will dig it. There's also a bonus from the cutting room floor at the end.
We're back on our b.s.
Hey hey! It's weird typing this a month before this episode drops, but here we are. Nerds Without Pants continues its deep dive into the PlayStation 2. I'll be honest, I don't remember what ground we cover here, but I know we hit Final Fantasy, so that's cool. Does anyone enjoy these, really? I guess we'll find out.
Oops, we did it again...
Welcome to a special edition of Nerds Without Pants! The guys are having to take a break from regular recordings, so we got together a few months ago to do another of these silly list things, because you all seemed to like it the first time around. This time, it's the PlayStation 2! Join us for a walk down memory lane.
I can't believe we're about to hit 200 episodes of this crap...
As Nerds Without Pants stands on the precipice of its 200th episode, Justin and Julian get together to rank their top five games of all time. We both branched out to play some games we probably never would have before, and we witness one of the most contentious cage matches in the history of the NWPWF!
